AWS DocumentDB Service Launch Fuels Open Source Controversy

Amazon DocumentDB is compatible with version 3.6 of MongoDB. It essentially implements the MongoDB 3.6 API by emulating the responses that a MongoDB client expects from a MongoDB server

Tension between the open source community and cloud platforms resurfaced yesterday after Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced a new managed document database service, which uses open source MongoDB code.

Amazon DocumentDB is described by the company as a fast and scalable document database that is designed to be compatible with existing MongoDB apps and tools.

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Soon after AWS DocumentDB service was announced yesterday, complaints and objections started to pour in, with many alleging the cloud major of infringing upon open source projects.

CNBC.com quoted MongoDB CEO Dev Ittycheria as saying: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so it’s not surprising that Amazon would try to capitalize on the popularity and momentum of MongoDB. However, developers are savvy enough to distinguish between the real thing and a poor imitation.”

Tweeters also erupted in anger with posts such as: “This is the #MongoDB service. Not even API compatible. Almost a copy.”

In order to stop large vendors from exploiting its freely available technology, MongoDB had recently released a set of public licensing policies for third-party commercial use. The license, however, applies to newer editions of the database. AWS apparently uses older MongoDB code in its service.

All about Amazon DocumentDB

Amazon DocumentDB uses a purpose-built SSD-based storage layer, with a six-way replication across three availability zones

“The storage layer is distributed, fault-tolerant, and self-healing, giving you the performance, scalability, and availability needed to run production-scale MongoDB workloads,” AWS chief evangelist Jeff Barr announced in a blog post.

With Amazon DocumentDB, the company claims storage can be scaled from 10 GB up to 64 TB in increments of 10 GB. It stores database changes as a log stream, allowing to process millions of reads per second with millisecond latency. Meanwhile, the 6-way storage replication ensures high availability.

Like the other AWS database services, Amazon DocumentDB is fully managed, with built-in monitoring, fault detection, and failover.

“Amazon DocumentDB is compatible with version 3.6 of MongoDB. Internally, it implements the MongoDB 3.6 API by emulating the responses that a MongoDB client expects from a MongoDB server,” Barr said.

Amazon DocumentDB is available now for use in the US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), and Europe (Ireland) Regions.

“Pricing is based on the instance class, storage consumption for current documents and snapshots, I/O operations, and data transfer,” Barr added.

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